Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Boxcar Playhouse

San Francisco

(415) 255-7846

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This is “not the first play in which a vengeful woman ties down a man and rants at him,” said Jean Schiffman in the San Francisco Examiner. Still, Lauren Gunderson’s “edgy” new comedy, which takes its name from Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction, lacks nothing in originality. Set in the woods of northern Georgia, the story involves an abused wife who, with the aid of two friends, duct-tapes her hunting-enthusiast husband to a chair surrounded by bear bait. Having done this, the accomplices “perform scenes from the couple’s troubled marriage” before leaving the accused to be devoured. Despite the macabre-sounding premise, Gunderson’s script not only makes each character adorably quirky but “engenders empathy for all four” as well.

Even when those quirks stretch believability, the actors make the most of them, said Robert Hurwitt in the San Francisco Chronicle. As the long-suffering wife, Erin Gilley is a “sweet Southern belle” with a resolve “that alternately stiffens and melts.” Her stripper friend, played by Andrea Snow, is “an eagerly theatrical sexpot,” and Patrick Jones’s duct-taped captive “is as self-absorbed and uncouth an abuser as one could wish—except when he isn’t.” Alas, Gunderson’s attempts to make statements about the seductiveness of abusers and the influence of pop psychology fall flat. But this show contains enough “offbeat and potentially grisly” humor—no pun intended—that the Bard’s immortally funny line is a fitting title.